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Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/642573
24 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.16 THE BIT A BIT TO DO Photos by Amber Estes Thieneman brazeiros.com Compare the two people at this stationary bike. Donna Butler retired from the Army after 23 years. I spend most of my time fat on my ass, reading. Butler, the owner of the Hip Hop Workout Boutique at Second and Oak streets in Old Louisville, wakes up at fve or six in the morning, no alarm clock. I can sleep so long it's technically hibernation. She's a tight coil of muscle, adorned with black leggings under gray shorts, a gray hoodie with "workout boutique" printed on the breast in pink, and a neon-pink Under Armour headband above her ponytail. When I look in the long mirror along the wall to my left, I mistake myself for a sack of corn propped up on two broomsticks and glued to a bike. Moments before jogging here from my apartment down the block, I realized that I somehow own no tennis shoes or basketball shorts. I squeezed into a pair of my roommate's shorts that lift dangerously high above my knees and an off-brand pair of paint-spattered tennis shoes he bought for Halloween. Butler doesn't comment on them as she helps strap my feet into the pedals. "You look comfortable," she says. She steps up to her bike, facing me from an elevated platform in the window, and takes me through warm-ups: stretching our arms forward, back, our legs pedaling, like butter at frst, and then like curd, and then like quicksand. "OK, we're gonna go up," Butler says, voice booming from her head mic to the beat of Drake and Rihanna. A blue light shines bright on my face. She can pedal backward, pedal while lifting weights, navigate a complex choreography of arm movements that I reduce to failing. She stands up on the pedals — left, right, left, right. I stand up on the pedals. Left? Right? "Whoa," Butler says. "I'ma keep you sitting." When my face goes numb, I tell Butler I'm done and guzzle from the plastic water bottle she gave me, "workout boutique" emblazoned on the label. I stumble over to a chair, my legs alternating between stone and air. Butler keeps pedaling. Most classes last 45 minutes. I made it 15. "Be honest: How bad am I?" I ask. "Well, on a scale of one to 10, I'd give you a three," she says, grinning. "But you get 100 percent for effort." — Dylon Jones